For more information
Call 1-800-351-0222

MASADA.
  Term Paper ID:28354 		Get This Paper Free! or
Essay Subject:
Examines archaeological finds at the site in Israel. Historical background of the seige; problems of authenticity; role of politics.... More...
7 Pages / 1575 Words
10 sources, 23 Citations, APA Format
$28.00

More Papers on This Topic


Paper Abstract:
Examines archaeological finds at the site in Israel. Historical background of the seige; problems of authenticity; role of politics.

Paper Introduction:
This research will examine archaeological finds that have been made at Masada in Israel. The research will set forth the historical background and context for archaeological research at Masada and then discuss how modern research has contributed to the understanding of history of ancient eastern Mediterranean culture. In Western culture, the basis for understanding the events that gave Masada a high historical profile was for centuries the work of Josephus, a first-century Jew who wrote an account of the three-year siege by Roman legions of a Jewish fortress community originally built by Herod the Great, the last Hasmonean king (Small, 1990). The siege followed the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in AD 70, the culmination of the so-called First Jewish Revolt, which had begun in AD 66 at the instigation of th

Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.


Based on the discovery of stones thrown by theballista, Yadin's group conjectured that they had been launched from theramp and from ground below the ramp. Further, Yadinappears to have agreed to the state funeral for the skeletons because ofthe highly charged political climate in Israel that pushed for it; morewill be said about this feature of Masada archaeology. Levant, 22, Retrievedfrom World Wide Web 28 February 2 , athttp://www.art.man.ac.uk/arthist/Lev-Abs.htm. Yadin's initial archaeological efforts appeared toconfirm much of Josephus's story. Rolef, S.H. Phasing Masada's architecture. According to Josephus, when the Jews ofMasada, known as the Sicarii, saw the inevitability of being overrun andeither killed as rebels or dispersed as slaves, the leadership engaged in amass murder of women and children and mass suicide of themselves. 281) of the murder of theRoman governor of Judea, which incited the revolt and which led to thepunitive expedition led by Vespasian, who oversaw the destruction of thetemple. He further argues that the Romans massacred the bodies of theSicarii and then threw them into the Dead Sea, which Masada overlooks. Masada discoveries. Some 25 skeletons (the only ones) that were found at Masadawere given a state burial by the government of Israel (Yadin, 1966). Apartfrom Ben-Yehuda's advocacy of rejecting a national myth based on faultycollective memory that cannot be confirmed by the archaeological record,consider an even more highly charged term: Masada complex (Rolef, 1993)describes a view held by some Israelis that loss of independent statehoodwould be much worse for Israel than fighting to the end. This same inference was made by Yadin (1966),who found the name of Eleazar, the leader of the group, inscribed n one ofthe ostraca. Frontline: From Jesus to Christ. Political dictionary of the state of Israel.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Small, D.B. He has pointedout, for example, that the skeletons at Masada would not likely have beenJews since Jews would not have been buried with an unclean animal. The food wasfound to be dated from the period of Herod the Great, not the JewishRevolt, which suggests that it would not have been edible by the Sicarii.As for the weapons stores cited by Josephus, Cohen notes that, based onsubsequent archaeological study, they turned out to be from Herod's period,thus not likely to be used by the Sicarii. (1966). Boadt, L. (1966). London:Penguin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hurvitz, G. Cohensummarizes the basis for the controversy by reference to the absence, notthe presence, of an archaeological record: The archaeological discoveries of Professor Yadin show that Masada was besieged by the Romans in the fashion described by Josephus, but they do not tell us how the defenders of Masada were killed. In addition, Yadin's team found stores of ancientweaponry, on one hand suggesting that the Sicarii had abundant militarysupplies and on the other creating an archaeological mystery about why theywere not more effectively used. The story of Masada: Discoveries from theexcavations [museum catalogue]. 14).The food stores, Watzman adds, were kept cool in two caves exploited forthat purpose. A ram also broke through the outerwall, although the Sicarii appear to have constructed an inner wall, madeof wood and earth, as an additional barrier, presumably during the sameperiod of time that the Romans were building their siege works on the sideof the Masada slope (Yadin, 1966; Cohen, 1982). 4 ). (1997). The tests date the burial site to the time of the Jewish revolt, but Zias notes that Romans sacrificed pigs at burials. Both ostraca and jars with Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions, aswell as fragments of Hebrew scrolls, have been uncovered at Masada(Hurvitz, 1997). (1995). Masada. References Ben-Yehuda, N. Cohen (1982) challenges the view that the foodstuffs, discoveredlargely intact at Masada, were being used by the Sicarii. Masada: Herod's fortress and the Zealot's laststand. Such supplies enabled the 96 inhabitants of the fortress to resistthe Romans' assault until AD 73. Themajor controversy centers on the famous collective suicide of the defendersof Masada, preceded by the mass murder of their loved ones. Equipped with cisterns and food stores, Masada had been both wellengineered and well secured as a fortress and leisure retreat at the timeof its construction. Cohen (1982) cites Josephus's report thatthe Romans found arms for more than 1 , men. This research will examine archaeological finds that have been made atMasada in Israel. Journal of JewishStudies: Essays in Honour of Yigael Yadin, 33, 385-4 5. From piles of burned debris, it was similarly inferred that theSicarii had gathered all their possessions and destroyed them so that theRomans would not obtain them. As Cohen notes, Josephus could not haveknown about battle tactics and other events inside the fortress, still lessabout speech and specific behavior, to which he was not witness, though heclaimed to have gotten the story from a few Sicarii survivors -- women whohad hidden in a Masada cistern until the slaughter was over. Indeed, controversy surrounds the discrepancybetween Josephus and the discoveries of modern archaeology that have beenanalyzed independently of his Jewish Revolt, as well as the array ofconclusions that were drawn based on modern archaeological efforts. The "siege works," as they are called, wereconstructed by the troops of General Flavius Silva. Indeed, in 1992, thevalidity of that reconstruction received support from archaeologicalevidence of almost identical structures found outside Jerusalem, datingstructures at Masada (Boadt, 1992). (1993). Suetonius. Some of the Sicarii may have killed themselves, as many Jewsdid during the Revolt. The problem ofverification of either conjecture emerges because of an absence of adefinitive archaeological record. For this and for all the other details of Masada's history, we are dependent upon Josephus alone (Cohen, 1982). Joseph Zias of Jerusalem's Rockefeller Museum has engaged in an evenmore detailed study of archaeological findings at Masada. Provo, Utah: BYU Studies. He also takes the position that thecomparatively small force of Sicarii, who did resist but not veryeffectively, were ultimately no match for the systematic tactics of theRomans. (1993, January-February). Cohen (1982) takes the view that Josephus attributed toMasada events that took place at other sites of conflict during the JewishRevolt, including Jerusalem. (1957). Robert Graves (Trans.). Cohen (1982) attributes their strength to the fact that thetroops had built identical siege works at Jerusalem. This shows thepower of myth to overtake careful archaeological analysis even as it pointsto the need for careful archaeological method that does not conclude toomuch from too little evidence. However, howthe particular women and children isolated from the battle could haveheard, let alone reconstructed rhetorically, the speeches of Eleazar,cannot be explained by examination of Josephus's text alone. Watzman (1997) says that archaeologists in present-day Jerusalumagree that Yadin doubted the authenticity of the skeletons found at thesite but succumbed to Israeli political leaders' pressure to make aconnection with the Masada legend, which speaks to heroism and braveryagainst all odds. When theRomans breached the fortress, they found the bodies of the dead, along withostraca, or potsherds; this led Josephus to indicate that the leadershiphad cast lots to see who would kill the dependents and who would commitsuicide. Cohen, S. ArchaeologyMagazine, 49, 14-17). Public BroadcastingService. Moshe Pearlman (Trans.). Ben-Yehuda (1995) goes even further, arguing thatarchaeology cannot prove the Masada Sicarii were zealots; he uses socialhistory to prove that they were "merely" assassins who escaped to thefortress. Watzmanfurther reports: Zias carbon-dated textiles found with [the skeletons]. The Romans built a ramp to accommodate a boulder-throwing towerapparatus called a ballista (not strictly a catapult), and a ram that weremeant to destroy the wall. Ben-Yehuda's position is consistent, for example, withSuetonius's second-century account (1957, p. Also foundwere many Jewish and Roman coins consistent with the era of the JewishRevolt (Yadin, 1966). Watzman, H. In Western culture, the basis for understanding the events that gaveMasada a high historical profile was for centuries the work of Josephus, afirst-century Jew who wrote an account of the three-year siege by Romanlegions of a Jewish fortress community originally built by Herod the Great,the last Hasmonean king (Small, 199 ). Indeed, the mythological significance of the Masadalegend of collective suicide can be seen in the power of the phrase "Neveragain Masada!" Archaeological significance comes into play as well. New York: Random House. The importance of Josephus's account of the siege to modernarchaeological evidence is that on many points, the evidence does not tendto confirm that account. He concludes that the skeletons may well be the remains of soldiers from the Roman garrison that occupied Masada after the Jewish rebellion was suppressed (Watzman, 1997, p. (199 ). Some of the ostraca are inscribed with Jewish names. This was supported in 1996, when the luxuriousness ofthe facilities was inferred from excavation of a decorated reception hall,part of a series of previously uncovered rooms that functioned as anentrance into the compound. (1999). Thatwould help explain why so few of the 96 bodies have ever been found,although undoubtedly disposal of the bodies into the Dead Sea could havebeen accomplished had the Sicarii killed themselves. The Jews who established themselves in Masada may have leftJerusalem as early as AD 66 (Masada, 1999), possibly a hard-core faction ofthe zealots who began the conflict and then decamped to the well-fortifiedand well-supplied rock -- and well out of range of the confusionsurrounding destruction of the temple by Vespasian's legions (Cohen, 1982). The Catholic World, 236, 4 -5. In 1982, he says, Yadin confirmed not only that therewere far fewer than 25 bodies claimed to have been uncovered but also thatboth human and pig bones had been represented in the pile. (1982, Spring-Autumn). But the archaeological evidence does not support theconclusion that, under siege, the defenders of Masada could have organizeda systematic vote or project of murder-suicide. Modern archaeological examination of Masada was undertaken extensivelybetween 1963 and 1965, supervised by Yigael Yadin, professor of archaeologyat Hebrew University who had formerly been a military intelligence officerin the Israeli army. Twelve Caesars. Masada myth: Collective memory and mythmaking inIsrael. 15). Recent archaeological finds inJerusalem related to the early church. A less elaborate entrance at one edge of thesite "seems to have been reserved for deliveries" (Watzman, 1996, p. Thus discrepancy between Josephus'sreport of Roman and Jewish behavior in the final days lies in the fact thatJosephus ascribes to the Sicarii, the name commonly given to the Jewishgroup that held Masada, a whole range of behavior, including twovaledictory inspirational speeches by the Sicarii leader, Eleazar, thatcannot be credibly substantiated. The modern view of the end of the siege is critical of the Josephusand of the apparent influence exerted by Josephus's account of the JewishRevolt on Yadin. Discovered andpreserved almost intact, they consisted of a cirumvallation, orartificially constructed rampart-trench configuration, plus a ramp andcampsites. Retrieved from World Wide Web, February 28, 2 , athttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/masadachart.html. The research will set forth the historical background andcontext for archaeological research at Masada and then discuss how modernresearch has contributed to the understanding of history of ancient easternMediterranean culture. This reconstruction ofprocedures is based on archaeological evidence that the outer wall of thefortress had been penetrated by a ram, as well as the evidence of a wallframework built of wood and charred by fire. Absent from Josephus's own account of the siege of Masada are thehuman-interest details that might tend to lend credibility to the story,notably, as Cohen says, silence regarding such things as horrible cries ofwomen and children being slaughtered. Reference has been made to the role of politics in the archaeology ofMasada. Masada: Literary tradition,archaeological remains, and the credibility of Josephus. However, Watzman (1997) reports on findings from subsequent study ofYadin's excavation photographs of the skeletons and of materials ancillaryto the skeletons. Yadin (1966) cites excavations of stores of such food commodities aswine, dates, flour, oil, and olives, together with materials such asbaskets, pottery, and textiles. Of the pottery, the ostraca which wasinscribed with Jewish names was held to be consistent with the story of themass murder-collective suicide lottery postulated by Josephus. (1996, Novemer-December). Thus the archaeological record at Masada seems far from historicallyconclusive. Instead, Josephusconstructed such a system, based on similar stories (Cohen, 1982). Josephus, an ethnic Jew who appears to have belonged to and acquiescedin Roman hegemony, combined "a fertile imagination, a flair for drama andexaggeration, polemic against the Sicarii, and literary borrowings fromother instances of collective suicide" to create "his Masada story" (Cohen,1982, p. (Ed.). The siege followed the destructionof the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in AD 7 , the culmination of the so-called First Jewish Revolt, which had begun in AD 66 at the instigation ofthe zealots. Cohen (1982) also cites the Sicarii's murder of some 7 Jewishwomen and children at En Geddi, not far from Masada. Yadin, Y. Inside those caves, archaeologists found remains of storagejars, an amphora (egg-shaped jar) with Herod's name on it, wooden utensils,and remnants of food. On the other hand, the siege from the Roman point of view, consistentwith the determination of Rome to put down the Jews once and for all, asexplained by Suetonius, was archaeologically reconstructed from camps andwalls surrounding the fortress. From the ostraca, according to Josephus,the Romans inferred that some leaders had killed the women and children andthat some or all of the men had committed suicide, to avoid capture by theRomans.

If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:

Search for:

or

We can write a Custom Essay just for you.


Browse Essays by Subject